...Or else, as evidenced by that cutlass pointed in your direction.

Two days ago, a co-worker mentioned that 'International Talk Like a Pirate Day' was a couple of days away. I mis-heard that as Wedensday 9/18, and actually having an idea of something to draw, hurriedly whipped up something during lunch break, helped along by parts of three or so pirate costumes selected from Google Images.

Owing to the tight timeline, I resolved to color this without inking, meaning extra work on making the pencils as sharp as possible. I didn't consider this a commission-quality pic due to the way I was rushing through it, (although some folks might think otherwise--maybe it's just that I'm not used to doing "sketchy color" images). I left the pencils on top, directly painting the flats underneath. After patching up the inevitable gaps between colors (some artists use a seperate layer for each color--I didn't) I applied highlights and shadows on their own layers to bring some semblance of three-dimensionality to the character, leaving most of the pencils in place to serve as outlines.

I continued the marathon effort at home until sleepiness started causing repeated coloring errors, at which point I got a few hours sleep. Reawakening at about 4am, I finished off the piece a couple of hours later, figuring "better late than never". It was when I started looking around FA and noticed no pirate-themed pics in the recent uploads that I looked up the "holiday" on Wikipedia and found that ITLAPD was actually 9/19, meaning I had actually finished the pic in time to post it on the day of its theme. It was still a tight timeline though--I usually take much longer to color pics since I really don't know what I'm doing with color (compared to higher-tier artists) and have to think about what I'm doing just to get the results I do get.

Now as for the content, Tatiana, being the most aggressive member of my group, was the natural choice to play the pirate. Couple that with a "Captain Morgan" stance and brandishing a sword at the viewer, one can easily imagine her willingness to punish your disobedience with pointy steel. As mentioned above, her outfit is a combination of parts of other pirate costumes for women, and so isn't intended to be historically accurate. But neither is ITLAPD itself :)

Pencil on bristol colored in Micrografx Picture Publisher. Six layers including attribution and logo, 153MB at full uncompressed size.